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What does the country Chile conjure up for you in the mind? I am not referring here to its political associations directly although for most of us we might summon up the names of Pinochet and Allende, and the CIA provoked coup of the 1970s. Can you define Chilean identity and the country’s national characteristics? If you can’t then you need to watch The Pearl Button and also if you get the chance, its predecessor, the even more remarkable Nostalgia de la Luz (Nostalgia of the Light, literally translated) part of a planned trilogy of which the Pearl Button is the middle film.

The late Claude Miller’s final film is intensely claustrophobic, unventilated and suffocating, leaving one gasping in the darkness for a small shot of air. It is also an exquisite and accomplished adaptation of Francois Mauriac’s classic 1927 novel, strikingly framed and idyllically located in French period heaven which is a little at odds with the tale itself, as oppressive as a totalitarian state.

It hasn’t received the same publicity as that other recent adaptation – The Great Gatsby – which is a bit of a shame in my view, as it is a sumptuous and solemn film, a feast for the senses that provides an extraordinarily perceptive insight into an intense and miserable marriage of convenience and emulates its oppressiveness by perfect pace and timing. A nourishing visual feast, seductive sounds and an overwhelming quietness of a quality, you rarely find in modern life, that is at once both soothing and stimulating. It is indeed a work of art, and so right at home in the little gem that is Manchester’s Cornerhouse.

This coming of age story about two teenage boys who meet on a Welsh campsite is also a coming of age story for Lloyd Eyre-Morgan (LEM Films) as a filmmaker. It is certainly evocative of much of the randomness and accident involved in fumbling through those coming of age experiences, in terms of story, structure, execution and outcome. It's also a bit random in its flirtation with politics and moral messages.

"That was more romantic than I was expecting.” To quote my 12 year old daughter after watching the The Great Gatsby, the most recent film from the master of romance himself, Baz Luhrmann (of Romeo & Juliet and Moulin Rouge fame).

Starring Leonardo Di Caprio and, she who can do no wrong, Carey Mulligan, the film IS romantic. After all, the film is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book of the same name and delves deeply into the lives of the rich and famous of the decadent 1920’s. Set in New York, the film looks at the lives in particular of Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) and his rich and beautiful cousin Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan). Unhappily married to womanising Tom (Joel Edgerton), Daisy re-establishes contact with her cousin Carraway, and he unsuspectingly becomes the conduit between herself and the enigmatic J. Gatsby (Leonardo Dicaprio) for them to rekindle their love affair of five years earlier. The story unfolds until its predictable, but still shocking, tragic end.

Humour, Crisis and Lost Identity

The 19th Viva Festival opened on the 8th March to the themes of guerrilla warfare re-enacted on the car park of an American DIY store and the tragi-comedy of a botched jewel robbery in Madrid in the 1950’s. Humour starts the festival but rapidly turns into a much darker side.